I realize we are only receiving radio signals from a finite amount of distance, but it must be impossible we are the only "intelligent life" in the universe, and I would wager even within the next few star systems we could find life, if not here in our own system. Fermi's Paradox made good reading, other life could be so far beyond our own technology, it would be possible we could have nano-machines embedded within us, or in the landscape constantly monitoring.

Babbling on, Thoughts?

(If this is breaking any rules, sorry, or if there's a thread I missed like this I can contribute to, please direct me.)

SnickieX; Welcome to SETI@Home, and the message boards. You could be right about nano-probes. It would be an excellent way for an advanced stellar civilization to study one at our level of development. It could amass a great deal of information about us, without disturbing the status quo with an overt presence. If they discovered we were ready for face to face contact, they could, presumably, turn up in person. On the nearness of extraterrestrial civilizations: The latest information from the Kepler Space Telescope allows the inference that the nearest habitable (by our standards) planet could be within a couple of dozen light years. Michael

Possibly, civilizations could have risen on first generations stars thus their techonolgy could be light years more advcanded than ours; but however vast astronomical distances between stars could be an obstacle for face to face ET contact.

I'd be very hesitant to place our current space travel limitations on every possible civilization, especially those which have presumably had millions or billions of years head start on us. They could well have managed to devise some way to get around the problem of traversing great distances in space in reasonable lengths of time. The fact that we, in our technological infancy, have not yet devised such a thing is no argument that it can't be done. The history of science has been one of repeatedly accomplishing things that were previously considered impossible. Michael

The Universe is unfathomly large with uncountable stars and planets, a few of which may actually harbour intelligent life. If so, they will be too far away and have too many places to look to find us. If they have learned to harness the energy of an entire galaxy then maybe if they sent a beamed beacon to rotate in all directions we would possibly receive a message from eons in the past.

Can you figure out how we could find the origin and the date from which it was sent ??

The voyager probes are almost out of the Sun's sephere of influence, it can be possible that in the next milenia a ET civilazation could pick the signature of those probes and identify them artificial in nature; and this scnario brings to the speculation if the WOW signal could have been the signal of a passing alien satalite in the direction of Chi Sagittarii in Sagittarius.

If so then we should be able to find some intelligent message in the transmission that was captured. I believe that we have most likely analyzed this signal and have found nothing. I don't see much discussion as to it's relation to random noise or other spectra.

Even if the WOW signal was nonterrastial in nature, human technology is not suficiently advcended enough yet in order to decode possible ET radio signlas. If SETI finds artificial non terrastial signals, then those signals would probably be random in nature, like TV signals from Earth being captured by an alien radio telescope.

Such signals would not be random in Nature. Signal processing is in fact a well developed science. The spectrum of any radio or television signal or any intended message signal would immediately be determined as not to be random.

An intentional signal would presume some cleverness on the part of the encoder that would be unambiguous proof that it was sent from an advanced civilization such as ours.

Certainly: any frequency at all could be used, and not only radio or microwave. It’s just that the region of the “water hole” is thought to be one of the most likely bands for a beacon or “shout” to be transmitted in.

A form of microbial life has been found inside a metorite CL1. There are 9 metorites that are carbonbased clondrite. It is contriversal but it makes sense. This is a rather exciting thing for man to find. This species of fossilized microbe is is about 5 microns and not earthlike. In the article the specimen is organic. We might have proof positive of microbial extraterrestrial life. Finding intelligent lifeforms is next.

Considering there is our gaxalay has an estimated 200-400 billion stars I believe there is intelligent life out there and some have devoloped interstellar travel. These races are in all likelihood several hunderd,if not thouisands of years ahead of us.I believe we are being observed,studied, or whatever discreetly. The reason we humans haven't been contacted is we are fairly young race and need to outgrow our aggression and such. I see Seti@Home as listening in on the party like the old phone system we use to have. Whether or not we actually hear anything more than the WOW signal isn't a sure thing. I believe most of the UFO sightings are explainable ranging from wishful thinking to classified new types of military aircraft. Think of the Stealth Fighter and Bomber they don't look like what is considered a normal plane. I don't believe those who have claimed to have been abducted by ET

Granted, that most UFO reports have mundane explanations. I don't know of any responsible person who says otherwise. It is the remaining 5 or 10 or 15 percent of cases that can not be explained that are of real interest. Despite what is sometimes said, this is not simply a case of not having enough data to explain this small remainder of cases. When the best documented cases are examined, we still see a small, but significant portion of persistently unexplainable cases. Such cases frequently involve apparently solid, metallic objects, moving in ways that indicate intelligent control, and suggesting a technology that can violate the laws of physics, as we understand them. Michael

Unexplained UFO cases are just that, unexplained by purpose. Weather phenomenon, military research, space techonology research. Back in the 70s when F117 was being developed, preaty certain if someone saw that craft flying due it is shape, would think that Earth was being visited by ET. Any ET that would come to Earth for exploration, would be spending huge amounts of energy resources just to get here due to astronomical vastly distances between stars. To put it perpective, our closest star system, Alpha Centauri,A and B, to date, no planets have been observed on that system; that means any ET would have to come from beyond Alpha Centauri. Lets just say if Glise f in Glise 581 has an advanced civilization and identifies Earth's biomarks; that planet is 20 light years way from us, they would have to travel 120 trillion miles to get to Earth. No biological tissue would live long enough to make that trip, unless they go Star Strek way, like Crynogenics, or other suspend animation aproaches. Then the question of prupolsion comes to mind; to have a craft carry living beings 120 trillion miles would carry vast astronomical amounts of energy expenditure. Back to Alpha Centauri system, that system is very intriging, with two Sunlike stars, the possability of finding planets could be great; has SETI ever turned its hear to it? that system being so close, could Keppler detect any planets in there? The solar system and Alpha Centauri being so close, did the solar system and Alpha Centauri origaned from the same massive star that went supernovea, that gave birth to our system.